Lando Norris has called for stricter penalties in Formula One following an incident that ended his race at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. The British driver was forced to retire after a collision involving Alpine’s Franco Colapinto and Pierre Gasly at a safety car restart.
Norris was running in eighth place when Colapinto, attempting a bold move at the opening corner after the restart, lost control of his Alpine car and collided with Gasly. Gasly’s car then crashed into Norris’s McLaren, taking both drivers out of the race.
As a result, Norris fell 116 points behind in the championship with only eight races left in the season and 208 points still up for grabs.
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Speaking about the incident, Norris criticised the lack of tougher sanctions for such reckless driving, stating, “If you cause a crash on a restart like this, you should have at least a one-race ban. I just got taken out, and the FIA should be stricter by starting to hand out bans for this kind of stuff. It is just careless. It costs a lot of money; all my parts are in the bin now. This is not the kind of driving that belongs in Formula One.”
He added, “In Formula One, you would expect drivers to anticipate that grip and tyre temperatures will be low during restarts. You want to compete against the best drivers, and when incidents like this happen, it shows they shouldn’t be there.”
Colapinto accepted responsibility for the accident, which also saw both Alpine drivers lose points-scoring positions. The 23-year-old was handed a 10-second penalty by the race stewards and faces a potential grid penalty at next week’s Malaysian Grand Prix, as he did not finish in Azerbaijan.
Responding to Norris’s call for a ban, race winner George Russell suggested the punishment might be too severe. He commented, “I think that is too harsh. Safety car restarts, cold tyres, and very small mistakes can have big consequences, as we saw today. Race bans should be for drivers who intentionally do something very dangerous and reckless.”